While Bethesda, Maryland, makes an ideal base camp for tours into Washington, D.C., there are places of interest even if you don't leave the city. For anyone with an interest in history and the Bible, the Dennis and Phillip Ratner Museum will hold your attention with a permanent collection of Phillip Ratner's sculpture, paintings and drawings; the museum also contains a gallery on Children's Literature in Art and the Israel Bible Museum.
An artist in multi-media, in Safad, Israel, Phillip Ratner first opened the Israel Bible Museum. While there, he worked on more than 250 pieces of art that had a relationship with the Hebrew Bible. He's a native of Washington, D.C., and has taught in the public schools in the area for 23 years. Dennis Ratner, a co-founder of the Ratner Museum, is also the CEO of Ratner Companies which operates a number of different companies specializing in salons and hair cutting; Ratner Companies owns almost a thousand salons and hires over ten thousand stylists in fourteen states in the U.S., as well as in the United Kingdom.
The Israel Bible Museum features a variety of galleries on Biblical subjects, such as Genesis, King Solomon's Song of Songs from Psalms, Heroes and Heroines of the Bible, Exodus, Bible Stories, and Futures Bible. The art work takes its inspirations from tales about the Creation of Light and Adam and Eve, the Flood, the story of Lot, and so on. A fascinating gallery is the one dedicated to the Futures Bible, in which art work depicts how the various Old Testament stories might look if they were to occur in the future! What might a 21st Century Golden Calf look like? How about a Burning "Bush" Satellite? Or a Hydroponic Mini-Vineyard?
The Gallery for Children's Literature in Art derives its inspiration from classic children's stories, including the following works: Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Beauty and the Beast, and The Pied Piper.
The Ratner Museum is open to the public on Sundays from ten in the morning to four thirty in the afternoon, and from Monday to Thursdays from noon to four in the afternoon. It's not open on holidays and closed through all of August. There isn't an admission charge to the museum, although groups of twelve or more will require a reservation. The museum is located at 10001 Old Georgetown Road in Bethesda, and visitors with questions may inquire by calling (301) 897-1518.
If you find yourself in Bethesda and have an interest in exploring an artistic view of the Old Testament, you should investigate the Dennis and Phillip Ratner Museum.